The Obama administration, with the help of some prominent conservatives, is mounting a full-court press this week to push the case to rework the nation’s criminal justice system. The argument: too many people are in prison at great economic and human cost to the United States.

A band of liberals and conservatives joined on Monday at a White House event to urge Congress and the states to re-examine the high cost of incarceration. They want lawmakers to look at ways to reduce the U.S. prison population, prepare inmates for life after prison and take measures to prevent people from turning to a life of crime.

At the same time, the White House released a new report on the economic consequences of the criminal justice system that calls the current patchwork of state and federal laws too costly and not very effective at deterring crime. The report included a flood of statistics that make a strong case for an overhaul of the system.

“Sometimes a cost-benefit analysis tells you it’s a slam dunk,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a noted conservative economist and president of the American Action Forum.

Arthur Brooks, president of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said the case for an overhaul is not just about money. “This is about the lives we are throwing away,” he said. “We pay an enormous price for this.”

Some reforms under consideration include easing automatic sentences, eliminating requirements that people list criminal records on job or housing applications, expunging records after a certain period, using non-prison alternatives for drug offenders and offering more educational or vocational help in jail.

More conservatives have come around to the idea of reform — an issue long pushed by liberals — because of the high costs involved. The U.S. spends about $80 billion a year to house 2.2 million inmates.

Yet more than half of all ex-convicts commit future crimes, a problem fueled in large part by inadequate efforts to prepare inmates to rejoin society after prison, advocates say. Many can barely read, and they are provided with little assistance to get a job once they are free. There’s also a racial element: A high percentage of those in prison are black or hispanic who are jailed at higher rates than whites for the same offenses, reformer say.

As Holtz-Eakin noted, the majority of U.S. governors are Republican and they struggle to cope with the expenses involved at a time when state budgets are especially tight. In a few cases, states pay more for incarceration than they do for education.

The percentage of Americans in prison is the highest among all developed countries, and it’s four times the world average, according to a lengthy report issued by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The prison population has exploded since 1980 despite a huge drop in the crime rate.

The White House report contends that the higher incarceration rate is not the main reason for the drop in crime. Jason Furman, head of the CEA, said extensive research suggests changing demographics, better police tactics and improved economic conditions are the more likely reasons — a contention many but not all conservatives reject.

Whatever the case, the call for reform is growing louder. Staunch conservatives such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and ex-Texas Gov. Rick Perry have criticized the current U.S. approach. And efforts to change the system have been funded by big-money conservatives such as the Koch brothers.

Don’t look for a major reform bill to pass in a presidential election year, however. Republican presidential contenders have spoken little about the issue, for one thing. And Hillary Clinton, while supportive of an overhaul, has to tread carefully because a law signed by her husband in 1994 is often blamed by liberals as a root cause of what they view as a warped criminal justice system.

Some 22 years ago, Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, a law that put more money into police and prisons and mandated longer sentences.

“Gangs and drugs have taken over our streets and undermined our schools,” Clinton said at the time. “Every day, we read about somebody else who has literally gotten away with murder.”

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